


Not Over

by Camellianswer



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Jakob Orbital Elavator, Maverick Hunters, Rockman X AU, Rockman X8 | Mega Man X8, Tragedy, mavericks, moon base
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 07:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17863103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camellianswer/pseuds/Camellianswer
Summary: With 7 wars behind them, it's hard to believe that any conflict could ever be over.This is my version of the MMX universe in which Axl and Lumine were actually good friends before the deadly events of X8. This story follows the finale of Mega Man X 8 except for a few details: Lumine’s true plans revealed about a week after Sigma’s defeat, Axl’s grief over Lumine’s death, and some dialogue changes. Please bear with me.





	Not Over

Lumine’s giant wings began to droop, and parts of him shimmered as the Copy energy wore off. Axl fired a steady stream of deadly laser bullets at Lumine’s body. The Maverick only feebly attempted to dodge. He was clearly done for. And a remote part of Axl that wasn’t battle-buzzed recoiled in horror at what his friend had done, at what he himself was now being forced to do. He kept firing, and each blast drove into his own heart.

Finally the Maverick crashed to the pitted ground, raising a cloud of dust. Lumine emitted the killing light once more in a quick burst that did little damage to the Hunters. Then his body gave way, transforming jerkily back to his original form.  
X took a deep breath and moved in closer. “NOW! Concentrate your fire!” He yelled an order over the lingering echoes of Lumine’s crash landing, and alternated semi-charged shots from both his busters. Zero circled to the right, slashing a green arc of deadly plasma down the center of Lumine’s chest, widening the fatal crack that X had blasted in Lumine’s armor.

For a moment, it looked like Lumine, though badly damaged, could not fall. The Maverick staggered back under the onslaught, his head lolling back horribly. Fuel dripped from gashes in his body and he could barely move, but he still stood against the combined fire of the Hunters. His mouth worked, trying to get words out.

“This…is…your…”

A supercharged blast from X drove the remaining words into oblivion, ripping a hole clean through Lumine. The Maverick stopped cold, his amber eyes fixed on nothing, swayed, and collapsed to his knees. He was stiff, falling back only a little, like a creaky lawn chair, and then stopped moving. A line of dark fuel dripped down from a split in his head. The light in his crystal faded out and his empty gaze was fixed on the blue planet above them.

Silence.

It was uncanny how quiet it was. Axl’s ears still rang from the constant cacophony of gunfire, but now not a single sound stirred the air. Lumine kneeling in the center of it all, the dust around him beginning to settle. He was surrounded by a halo of earthlight, giving him an alarmingly heavenly appearance. Axl’s chest was tight. It felt more like a nightmare than real life. He put his pistols back in the holsters and tried to breathe, but now that the threat was gone, it was difficult to move.

X and Zero slowly moved out of their defensive stances. X lowered his buster, but he did not reconfigure his hand, and Zero didn’t put his saber away. After all this, after Lumine had stood up while they were shooting him point-blank, it was hard to believe it was actually over. Sigma had a disturbing habit of pretending to die and then exploding out of the ground in a hideous new battle body. Unconsciously, the two older Hunters expected Lumine to pull a similar trick.

When a minute passed and nothing moved, not the faintest whisper of sound came through, they began to relax a little more. X looked to Axl, who was gazing at Lumine’s body as if spellbound. Now that the battle was over, X could allow himself the distraction of emotion as he empathized with Axl’s grief. They hadn’t just killed a Maverick tonight. They had killed Axl’s FRIEND.

“Axl…” X began to speak, but it was like Axl couldn’t hear him, walking slowly closer to Lumine’s body. Axl wished for all this to be unreal, a trick, perhaps this was a decoy and Lumine was alive somewhere, not Maverick. At the very least, he wished they could repair Lumine. Perhaps not too much damage was done. The desperate hope drew him closer to his friend’s body, wringing his heart with despair to see him like this. If only…

CR…RAAAK

Lumine’s corpse shuddered, and the split down his center widened infinitesimally. Before anyone could react, a long black tentacle whipped out of Lumine’s body and stabbed into Axl’s head. A noise like shattered glass rang out, and blue shards fell from Axl’s ruined head crystal, glinting in the earthlight. Axl didn’t even have time to cry out. The system crashed instantly, deprived of the main core that gave him life. And more tentacles lashed out of the Maverick, took advantage of Axl’s helplessness, wrapped around his neck and hands and jerked him closer.

“NO!” In the split second that all of that happened, X lunged forward and grabbed Axl, at the same time firing wildly at Lumine’s hideous undead corpse. Zero swung his saber too quick for the eye to follow and severed the thick base of the tentacle. He swung again, splitting Lumine in two and sending the pieces crashing over the rubble-laden ground.

X crouched and held Axl in his arms, ripping at the tentacles still clinging to the prototype. The horrible black things had wound tightly around Axl’s neck, forced through cracks in his armor, and had wrenched his jaws open, trailing down into his mouth. X pulled the limp bits off his young friend, gripped with fear and revulsion. “Axl!  
Can you hear me? Axl!”

Zero stood a moment, watching the pieces of Lumine vigilantly as if they would suddenly spring to life again and menace them with those disgusting tendrils. When this didn’t happen, he turned to X and Axl, his brow deeply furrowed with worry. “How bad?”

“I don’t know yet…his crystal though, that’s…” X’s voice caught. “That’s a mess. It looks pretty bad.” He jerked the last bits of tentacle off Axl’s still form and shook the stuff off his hand.

A dim beep sounded in his helmet com. Alia. She sounded worried. “This is Alia. Am I getting through? X, do you copy?”

“I’m here, Alia.”

“Thank goodness. Zero? Axl? I need a status report.”

Zero made eye contact with X and then glanced away. “Zero checking in. Axl is…”

X cut him off. “Axl….Axl’s taken damage. But he’s fine!” He cradled Axl’s head in his lap, desperately wanting to believe his own words, and repeated “He’ll be fine, Alia. We’re headed back now.”

Alia confirmed that the Elevator was still functional, and promised to have a team of medics waiting at the bottom for their return. X then broke contact. The sudden silence made the recent events more crushing. He forced away his worry – as he had to do more frequently of late – and stood with Axl in his arms, trying not to jostle him too much. The movement was still obviously painful for Axl, whose face tensed and he groaned weakly. At least it meant he was still with them. X adjusted his grip and tried to be more careful.

“Hang in there, buddy…”

Rubble surrounded the Elevator, but the mechanism itself was miraculously undamaged. Most likely Lumine was simply not capable of destroying his most prized creation. Whatever the reason, X was grateful. He and Zero climbed aboard and got ready for the all-too-long ride back to Earth.

 

Zero had stationed himself against the far wall, far away from the window giving them a beautiful view of Earth, far away from X and Axl. He couldn’t have said why; he just needed to distance himself for a while. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, appearing to relax, but anyone who knew Zero well would recognize this posture as denoting extreme agitation. 

X knew Zero well. He caught a glimpse of his friend and asked in low voice “Are you alright?”

“Yeah…you?” Zero attempted to steer the conversation away from himself. “Not over-thinking what Lumine was talking about, are you?”

“Oh, that. No, actually.” He thought over Lumine’s words and shook his head, briefly and carefully so as not to hurt Axl. “No. Just becoming Sigma can hardly be called evolution, after all.”

“That’s the truth.” Zero was obviously not interested in the conversation, and X let it drop after Zero’s terse reply. He sensed his friend needed a little time alone. In the subsequent silence, X scanned Axl’s internal systems again. There was still a flicker of functionality, and he inwardly heaved a sigh of relief.

 

“Anyways…” A few thousand feet above the ground, Zero spoke again as if the conversation had not ended. “Even if we’re just doing all this for no reason…even if we’re destined to just die in the end…we still have to fight. Not only against Mavericks, but against our own destiny.”

X thought this over. He noticed an undertone of vehemence in Zero’s tone, and recalled him speaking of destiny after the Repliforce War. He wisely chose not to respond that he didn’t believe in destiny. 

Because right now, belief in destiny was the only thing keeping Zero going.

 

“You think it’s over? Finally over?”

Zero snorted cynically. “When has it EVER been over?”

“There’s always a first time.” X leaned back and closed his eyes. All he could do was hope for that first time, for a better future. That was what they needed…

Hope.

 

 

What Lumine had begun could not be halted so easily.  
A secret lay in hiding, waiting for the right time to rise.  
The new world had been born, and nothing could stop it now.

 

It was not over.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic. Yay! Formatting might be a little wonky. I'll be making edits to fix that.
> 
> The violence might not be too graphic but hey, there's robot "blood," so....GRAPHIC!
> 
> I've always wondered why Axl walked right up to Lumine's body in X8. He was dead, sure, but really. Don't approach a dead Maverick. If Axl was Lumine's friend, that would explain why he got up so dangerously close. Kinda like Zero and Iris. 
> 
> Leave me some messages! Thanks for reading.


End file.
